


nobody said it was easy / no one ever said it would be this hard

by nutellamuffin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Feels, Child Harry Potter, Harry talks a lot, Post-First War with Voldemort, Raising Harry Potter, Remus Lupin Feels, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Remus Lupin Raises Harry Potter, all of his friends are dead or in prison, and all he's got is lil harry, but it's cute, he's the LAST MARAUDER, i have so many feelings about remus raising harry, look - Freeform, who just misses his padfoot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27832879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: harry is four years old when he asks remus “where’s padfoot?” in the middle of scribbling what looks like a talking sun onto a scrap piece of paper, and remus chokes on his tea.
Relationships: Remus Lupin & Harry Potter, past Sirius Black/Remus Lupin - Relationship
Comments: 9
Kudos: 108





	nobody said it was easy / no one ever said it would be this hard

harry is four years old when he asks remus “where’s padfoot?” in the middle of scribbling what looks like a talking sun onto a scrap piece of paper, and remus chokes on his tea. 

_ (harry doesn’t ask much about his parents anymore, even though the conversations were rare and in between once he began to talk and then eventually babble away without a second thought, and remus would tell him anything about them that he wanted to know whenever he asked. but harry had never asked about sirius before, not ever, and remus had settled on the  _ ~~_ comforting _ ~~ _ thought that he’d forgotten about him.) _

remus sets down his teacup with shaking hands and exhales quietly, smoothing his hands down his thighs. harry eyes him carefully, hoisting himself up to sit on the table instead of in his booster seat, and after a long moment of silence, continues to scribble on his paper.

_ (the shaking has never stopped, hasn’t stopped since he fired his first spell that had resulted in someone else falling to the ground and never standing up again, when he didn’t have the wolf to blame.) _

“harry,” he says slowly, looking over at the boy who has a mess of hair that resembles his father’s that remus can never get to lie flat, and watches him stick his tongue out as he adds a nose to his talking sun.

“padfoot’s with mum and dad, right, moony?” harry answers casually, putting down his crayon and sitting up, and remus’ heart does a lurch in his chest about how easily he jumped to that conclusion.

“no- no, harry, he’s not,” remus sighs again quietly and reaches over, picking him up and bringing him into his lap, where harry happily occupies himself by fiddling with remus’ shirt buttons instead, humming absently. “padfoot is . . . not friends with us anymore.”

somehow, that seems more jarring than if sirius ended up the same way as james and lily, and harry promptly stops fiddling to look up at remus, eyebrows drawn together. “why not? i miss him.”

_ (remus’ chest promptly feels like it’s being constricted, and his first reaction is to answer with  _ **_me too,_ ** _ because he does. he misses sirius more than he cares to admit and he hates himself for missing him, because where there’s so much of him that hates sirius for what he’s done, for giving in to the thing he swore to never become, for putting harry in this position where he will never know his parents- but a part of him will always hate sirius for leaving him behind.) _

remus swallows and his throat feels like cotton as he says, “because padfoot did some bad things, and it’s not good for us to see him anymore.”

confusion is clear on harry’s face, and his eyebrows only draw together further as he lowers his gaze away from remus, down at his hands clutching at his moony’s shirt instead. and then he looks up at remus, and places his little hand on his cheek, and his entire expression softens as he says, quietly, “i know you miss padfoot, too, moony. you can be sad about it.”

_ (remus doesn’t know what makes him want to cry more; the fact that he hasn’t thought about sirius in weeks and yet he’s always thinking about him, every single fucking time he looks at harry and he thinks about what this boy would’ve had if it wasn’t for what sirius did; the fact that he  _ **_does_ ** _ miss him, more than anything else in the world, and he hates himself for it; or the fact that he knows most of the reason harry felt a need to say that is because that’s like what  _ **_he_ ** _ says to harry when he tells him he feels bad for missing his parents when he has his moony. he wraps harry up in one of his scarves- because whenever harry wakes up at night and climbs into bed with remus, he always asks for one of his scarves- and he tells him he’s allowed to be sad. because no boy should ever have to go through this, and yet here he was.) _

“i do miss him, harry,” remus feels his eyes burn, but he suppresses it, and when harry goes to lie against his chest instead he leans his head atop the boy’s own. “but i know that it’s good- better for us that we don’t see him anymore. sometimes your friends turn out to be not good friends, and then you make new friends after that.”

he can feel harry somewhat nod against his chest, and he has no clue whether or not he’s actually listening, but he feels a need to say it anyway. harry begins tracing little shapes on remus’ shirt, before adding, “i think you can find friends like padfoot, moony. at the park, i made a friend, and then he pushed somebody and i didn’t wanna be his friend anymore. but i found another friend who likes playing on the slide, too, and she doesn’t push anybody.”

harry wriggles his way out of remus’ arms to sit on the table and look at him, and when he does, he’s wearing that look of four-year-old-knowingness that you can’t decide whether to trust with your life or take with a grain of salt, and he says, “there’s gotta be somebody like padfoot who doesn’t do bad things, moony. there’s gotta be. maybe you’ll find them next time we go to the park.”

he nods then, satisfied with his answer, and gives remus a grin that he can only smile back to, and scoots over to his chair to pick up his crayon and continues colouring in his talking sun. remus can only sit and watch him for a moment, abently running his forefinger along the rim of his teacup.

his finger accidentally dipping into the scalding tea is what brings him back to reality, just in time for harry to slide over his drawing of what remus realizes is actually a talking flower, all blinding four-year-old grins and messy hair that reminds remus so much of yet another thing sirius has taken away from him.

_ (he chokes down some kind of sob in his throat and offers him a smile instead, and once harry goes to sleep he allows himself to sit on the kitchen floor and miss sirius in all its guilty, selfish, hateful pain that tears his heart apart for the third time in four years.) _


End file.
